


mountain at my gates

by oryx



Category: GARO (TV), GARO: Gold Storm Sho
Genre: & once again jinga is his own warning, Cutting, Knifeplay, Light Dom/sub, M/M, the dubious effects of makai artifacts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 16:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15934367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: The Houken daggers are stored away while they wait to strike at Ladan. Ryuga just wishes he could stop thinking about them.





	mountain at my gates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orjange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orjange/gifts).



> thank you so much for your kindness and patience.... i'm starting to realize that i kinda only have 1 (one) mode when writing these 2 but hopefully that's cool

  
They all watch Gald place the daggers into a charm-protected box near the back of the shop, the glint of their silver blades disappearing inside, his face set with something grim and decisive as he turns back to them. He’s been carrying them on him as they struggled to save Rian, the tense atmosphere leaving little time to even think, but now he can finally put them somewhere safe, at least for just a moment.  
   
“Nobody think about touching them, alright?” he snaps. “Me and Haruna are the only ones who can put them together again, anyway. It’s – it’s my responsibility. I was too late, but.” His shoulders slump low. “Next opportunity, I’ll… I’ll definitely do it right.”  
   
“Of course you will,” Haruna says, consoling. She pats the chair next to her. “Come have some tea. Relax a little, okay?”  
   
Over at the counter, D. Ringo says something. Daigo laughs in response, wry and bitter and tired, but it’s all strangely hard to hear. It’s like the rest of the room is slowly being muted away.  
   
Ryuga is still staring at the box.  
   
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, transfixed, until Rian waves a hand in front of his face and it’s like the volume has suddenly cut back in.  
   
“Are you okay?” she asks, arching an eyebrow. “You seem a little out of it.”  
   
“…Yeah,” he says, and smiles. “It’s nothing.”  
   
  
   
  
   
He’s felt odd, ever since freeing himself from that mirror. He should be at peace now, shouldn’t he? He’s accepted himself. His darkness.  
   
But somehow all he’s left with in the aftermath is an electric sort of restlessness, wound tight in his solar plexus like a coiled spring. Is it the shadow of Ladan, now looming over them in the distance? Is it the knowledge of what they’ll soon have to face? Clearly he can’t blame it on Rian’s absence anymore.  
   
It wakes him either way, jolts him out of sleep in the middle of the night when the rest of the shop is silent. He blinks up at the ceiling; scrubs a hand across his face with a sigh. This is the fourth night in a row this has happened. The previous three he’s simply laid there fruitlessly attempting to sleep again, wallowing in frustration. But tonight something is different in a way that’s hard to place, and he finds himself dressed and out on the darkened shop floor before he can even really consider it. A walk, he thinks. That will be good for him. By the time he returns, maybe this itch beneath his skin will be gone.  
   
On his way to the door, he stops in front of that ornate wooden box.  
   
His own pulse is somewhat loud in his ears as he lays a hand on the lid. Slowly lifts it open and stares down at the daggers inside. Even with a dampening spell laid over them, they still both possess a faint vibration as they attempt to repel from (or attract?) one another.  
   
It would be nice, he keeps thinking. If he could just hold the red dagger one more time.  
   
He reaches in and slips his fingers around the hilt.  
   
It feels right in his hand. This is the part he never told any of the others. That it felt good to hold it, like it was molded to fit his palm. That the power that flowed into him when he first touched it was like something tangible filling up an empty place inside him. And that tug, too. It should be uncanny, as it pulls him towards its match pair, but it isn’t. Weaker now that the other is right here in front of him, but still subtly there. He runs his thumb along the intricate metalwork of the red dagger distractedly as he considers its blue counterpart.  
   
After a moment of hesitation, in which his logic, his training tells him to stop this, he takes the blue dagger in hand as well.  
   
A chill runs up the length of his arm, as if he’d just been doused in frigid water. The image of a sharp smile flashes through his mind.  
   
For a time, he studies the two of them, turning them over between his fingers, feeling the almost magnetic repulsion as one tries unsuccessfully to force the other away.  
   
He’s sheathing the daggers through the loops of his belt and leaving the shop a moment later, stifling the overhead bell and shutting the door behind him as quietly as he can.  
   
  
   
  
   
His feet take him along what feels like a predetermined path. Something unconscious, as if he were being led by an invisible thread. Five blocks over, then six, past the old bank, the fire station, rows and rows of office highrises.  
   
Until finally he finds himself standing in front of a restaurant. High-class, judging by the design of the place – a sleek, minimalist design that seems to carry over into the interior, with high white ceilings and dark furniture, modern art hanging on the walls. This is the place, the thinks, and wonders where that thought came from. It’s currently about four in the morning, the business is blatantly closed, without any real sign of life, and yet there is a single light on deep inside. He tries the door and finds it strangely unlocked.  
   
His footsteps are loud as he weaves in between tables and makes his way back towards that light, which turns out to be a single overhead lamp shining down on an empty section of the bar. What seems to be a freshly poured drink sits on the counter as if it were waiting for him. Condensation glides down the side of the glass tumbler.  
   
He stops in front of it. Glances behind him with a wary feeling in his throat, scanning the rest of the darkened room.  
   
Turns back to find Jinga smiling at him from behind the bar.  
   
Ryuga instinctively takes two steps backward, shoulders tensing, wielding the red dagger in front of him in an instant (why had he left his sword? he can’t for the life of him remember making the conscious decision to leave it).  
   
“You should loosen up, Ryuga. Have a drink,” Jinga says, indicating to the glass. “Call it a celebratory gesture, or something. I mean who would’ve thought that I’d just be going about my night and suddenly,” he snaps his fingers, “I’d feel that resonance from the Houken daggers again? Talk about nostalgic. Ladan’s already up in the air, you know. But here you are still fiddling with those old things.”  
   
He leans across the counter with an eerie gleam in his eyes. “Or don’t tell me… They were calling to you? The great heroic Golden Knight, giving in to the sway of some little magic artifacts? That’s not very seemly.”  
   
Ryuga’s grip tightens around the dagger’s hilt.  
   
“Spot-on, huh? Did you want to feel it again? That connection with me?”  
   
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ryuga snaps, but Jinga’s smile only turns crooked. He vanishes a second later as if faded into the shadows, and Ryuga freezes, eyes darting around the room as he tries to anticipate where he’ll appear next.  
   
He isn’t expecting it to be right next to him. That presence is suddenly there, much too close, a hand brushing light against his hip. He spins around, blade slashing, but Jinga has already sidestepped away, the blue dagger now held lightly in his grasp. Panic hitting him, Ryuga lunges for it only to be sidestepped again.  
   
“Oh, don’t get so worked up,” Jinga says, waving his hand. “I’ll give it back soon enough. It’s pretty amusing, watching you all scramble to try and seal Ladan again. Might as well give you a fair chance.”  
   
He twirls the dagger between his fingers thoughtfully. Ryuga stops; finds himself watching the motion with a bizarrely singular focus.  
   
“I guess we never did really talk about it, did we?” Jinga muses. “About how I could sense you, through this little knife, before we even met face to face. And I know it must have been the same for you. It was nice, wasn’t it?  
   
“What a treat, to feel a Makai Knight’s righteous anger in the back of my mind. And as for you…” He turns to stare at Ryuga appraisingly, leveling his dagger in his direction, accusatory. “Maybe you liked not being so alone in your own head. Or maybe… you liked the pull. You liked being led.”  
   
Ryuga’s mouth is suddenly dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.  
   
Jinga laughs, baring his teeth. “No? Well, I suppose at a distance I wouldn’t get the full picture, would I? I shouldn’t make assumptions. Let’s try it again now. Sensing each other’s thoughts. It’ll be an interesting experiment.” He wraps his hand fully around the hilt of the blue dagger, his eyes meeting Ryuga’s and holding him there, paralyzing. “What am I thinking about, Ryuga?”  
   
He  _can_  see it, in this moment. The picture intrudes into his thoughts like a door being slammed open. A seemingly endless white room. An onyx black throne in the center.  
   
“Ladan,” Ryuga murmurs.  
   
Jinga looks delighted. “It really works, just like that? Now that is fun.” His expression shifts back into something sharper. “There’s a place for you in that throne room, you know. Kneeling right at my feet. Wouldn’t you like that?”  
   
There is another image in his mind, now, one that makes his stomach churn, and he shoves it aside with all the force he can muster. “I’ll pass,” he hisses, his jaw aching from clenching it tight.  
   
Jinga sighs, tossing up his hands. “And I ask so nicely, too. A bit hypocritical when you’ve got some intriguing thoughts in  _your_  head right now.”  
   
Ryuga blinks. Does he? Other than that lingering impression of the pitch black throne, his mind feels blank and empty. He’s been purposefully trying to keep it that way since Jinga reclaimed the blue dagger.  
   
“You probably don’t even realize,” Jinga says. “More of a subconscious thing, maybe. But you seem a little preoccupied with these.” He holds the dagger up to the dim light, the glow reflecting on its ornate surface. “You wouldn’t be the first Makai Knight to have a bit of a thing for blades, to be fair.” An odd kind of wistfulness crosses his face. “I remember feeling something stir, way back when I first got my sword. So I completely understand, Ryuga. I get it.”  
   
He’s moving before Ryuga has time to react, closing the distance in an instant to press his dagger to Ryuga’s throat.  
   
Ryuga goes utterly still. The Houken daggers are ceremonial, not exactly intended for combat, and yet there’s enough sharpness to them that this is still a potentially deadly place to find himself. The unnaturally icy edge digs into his skin as he swallows, and from that contact a shiver seems to work its way outward through him like a ripple.  
   
“Is it a danger thing, too, I wonder?” Jinga asks. He leans in a little closer, a hint of amusement against the flat black of his eyes. “I guess you wouldn’t be alone in that, either. Makai Knights are mostly a bunch of thrill-seeking degenerates, deep down. They all love to go on about honor and duty, but I know what it’s really about.”  
   
He drags the blade up, placing the tip just beneath Ryuga’s chin and forcing him to tilt his head, exposing his throat in a way that makes his common sense scream at him, every lesson he’s ever had drilled into his head replaying in an instant. Still, he can’t seem to move. His heart is hammering against the inside of his chest.  
   
Jinga holds him there, considering with a pensive hum, before trailing the blade up farther, tracing along his bottom lip. His breath gets caught somewhere in his chest. The feather-light touch of cold metal seems to raise up sparks beneath his skin that travel downward and settle low and hot in the pit of his stomach. The blade curves along the corner of his mouth, and –  
   
A twinge of pain. It takes him a moment to realize that Jinga has flicked his wrist, leaving an arcing scratch across his cheek. He’s smiling as he steps away towards the bar.  
   
Ryuga lifts his hand shakily to touch the warm blood welling from the mark. It’s like being woken by a loud alarm, like the weight of something unnamable slamming into him without warning. He stares down, dazed, past the blood staining his fingertips to the sworls and patterns of the wooden flooring at his feet, his breathing loud and uneven in his ears.  
   
“Well if  _you’re_  not going to drink this,” Jinga’s voice says. He glances over with some effort to find him draining the cocktail, pulling an unimpressed face as he tosses the glass back behind the bar with a shattering  _crash_. The blue dagger is stuck into the countertop like a pin on a map. “You know, I keep hoping human alcohol might taste like something again. That’s the one downside.”  
   
He seems to sense Ryuga’s eyes on him, turning back, mocking, to raise an eyebrow at him as he leans against the bar. “Do you want something from me, Ryuga?”  
   
“You – ” He falters.  
   
Does it even matter, what he says now? The circumstances here are too far gone to change. Their fights are already eerily intimate. This unpleasant, unshakable connection has been there since he first took the red dagger in hand. He’s still holding it now, and he forcibly relaxes his rigid white-knuckled grip, muscles screaming as he does so.  
   
He accepted his darkness, didn’t he? Might as well live with that in mind.  
   
“Can you do more?” he asks, his voice low and rough.  
   
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”  
   
He licks his lips. “Can you… Can you touch me more?” His eyes flick towards the blue dagger. “With that?”  
   
Jinga gives him a long, thoughtful look.  
   
“Well,” he says finally. “How can I say no to that kind of honesty?”  
   
(He wasn’t entirely right. Ryuga has never felt any sort of draw towards blades in general. It’s just these. An extension of that inescapable push and pull.  
   
Maybe that makes it worse.)  
   
  
   
Jinga lounges in one of the dark leather armchairs, watching him expectantly, the blue dagger swinging like pendulum between his fingertips.  
   
“You might want to take some clothes off,” he drawls. “Hard to get on with it otherwise.”  
   
Ryuga’s hand curls and uncurls at his side. He did ask for this, he reminds himself bitterly. There’s no point in acting taken aback. He’s taking a deep breath and tugging his shirt off a moment later, tossing it onto the nearest table and stepping closer. Jinga grins up at him.  
   
“First off, let’s make this a little more interesting.” He procures a black handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Turn around, will you? Arms crossed behind you.”  
   
Trepidation is beating in his throat as he complies, once again his training screaming at him. Turning your back on an enemy, says the teacher-like voice in the back of his mind, is one of the gravest mistakes a Knight can make –  
   
Jinga’s fingertips brush his wrists as he ties the cloth securely around them. One knot. Two. He’s placing a hand on Ryuga’s waist and turning him back around a moment later, in a manner so gentle it sets his teeth on edge. His hand is utterly cool, dry, an inhuman weight to it where it sits against Ryuga’s skin.  
   
“Now obviously you could break free of that anytime you wanted. But you won’t, will you?”  
   
Ryuga swallows hard. “No,” he says hoarsely.  
   
Jinga’s smile widens. “I didn’t think so.”  
   
His hand slides down, over his hip, the curve of his ass to dig his fingers into the back of his thigh and tug him closer still, their knees brushing. Ryuga thinks he gets what he’s being led towards. Doesn’t like it, but he gets it. He closes his eyes with a grimace as he straddles Jinga’s lap. Opens them again only to get overwhelmed by the closeness, and the unnatural strangeness of that closeness. If this were a human person, he would be able to feel their body heat beneath his own. Its absence is glaring.  
   
“So, where to start?” Jinga asks, more to himself seemingly than to Ryuga, picking up the blue dagger and pointing it once more at his throat with a casual carelessness. He trails the tip down this time, tracing along Ryuga’s shoulder, his collarbone, into the dip where it meets his breastbone. Turns the icy blade flat and drags it across his nipple with a contemplative hum. A shudder works its way through Ryuga, wrists twisting against his restraints. He’s already half-hard, and as the dagger slides across the flat plane of his stomach he can begin to keenly feel the tight strain of his cock against the leather.  
   
This time, it’s not with suddenness but with slow, purposeful intent when Jinga digs the very edge of the blade into his skin, carving a long, shallow cut just above his hipbone as Ryuga makes a choked noise in the back of his throat. Another on the other side, in perfect symmetry, and Ryuga’s entire body tenses, lips parted soundlessly.  
   
“So it’s like that, too, then?” Jinga murmurs, leaning in even closer, so that Ryuga can’t seem to look anywhere but his eyes. His grip on the underside of his thigh is bruising, now. “You want me to cut you up? Put some marks on you? Stake my claim?” A raised eyebrow. “I mean. I think that’s already been pretty well established, but if you’re so sentimental for it…”  
   
He presses the tip of the dagger right over his heart. Ryuga wonders if he can feel it pounding, conducted through the metal. When he slices a precise x into the skin Ryuga whimpers, rocking against him, his fingers digging hard into his palms behind his back. Jinga leans back appreciatively to watch blood bead at the surface of the skin and drip downward.  
   
“Well, I can’t deny,” he says. “This is a nice look for you.”  
   
Ryuga’s own breathing is loud in his ears. His thoughts feel blanketed by a hot, swimming haze, and he tries to blink it away to no avail. “Please,” he hears himself say. “Please, just…”  
   
Slowly, Jinga’s satisfied smile begins to wane.  
   
“Please what? You’re expecting more than this?” His eyes are suddenly cold and flat as he reaches up to wrap his hand around Ryuga’s throat, fingers pressing right against his pulse. “Aren’t you getting the wrong idea here, Ryuga?”  
   
He’s being shoved back in an instant, the high white ceiling suddenly visible above him before he is slammed hard into the floor, the air knocked from his lungs. Dazed, it takes him a split second longer than it should to wrench his hands free from their bonds and pull the red dagger from his belt loop, pressing it to Jinga’s side, his other hand twisting into his collar. They stay like this for a time, silent and still save for Ryuga’s ragged breathing, until Jinga curls his lip in wry amusement. His hand is still encircling his throat, just tight enough to be uncomfortable.  
   
“Don’t misunderstand,” he says. “Watching you like this is good entertainment. But I have to establish a few ground rules. I’m going to be your king soon, Ryuga. And when a king does you a favor, it should be an honor. You don’t just ask and ask for more.” His grip relaxes a bit, shifting, thumb trailing along Ryuga’s jawline in a way that makes his cock twitch. “You seem to want me to be a generous master. But I’m afraid that’s just not how things are going to work, under my rule. I definitely have my whims, I suppose. But a real reward should always feel earned, shouldn’t it? A king can’t just go around letting his subjects have whatever they like. Expectations are what kingdoms are built on.”  
   
He releases his hold and gets to his feet with a slow grace, taking the blue dagger from his breast pocket and tossing it down to pierce the floor not two inches from Ryuga’s face. The blade still has a smear of blood staining it as it quivers there.  
   
Jinga smiles. “Like I promised. There it is. I wonder what your little friends would think if they knew where you’d taken it.” A thoughtful pause. “Maybe next time, if you’re not too selfish, I’ll really give you what you want. Wouldn’t you like that?”  
   
His laugh is swallowed up by the darkness as he steps back into it and is gone.  
   
It takes Ryuga a minute to remember how to breathe. When he does it’s thick and painful in his chest, as if something unspeakably heavy were pinning him down. He bites his lip hard enough to draw blood as he lays there, one hand trembling at his side. His other is still gripping the red dagger hard enough to hurt. He pins it into the wooden floorboard next to its blue counterpart; stares long and hard at the thrum of tension in the way they react to one another, the heat in the pit of his stomach seeming to pulse with the same rhythm, as the silence of the room creeps in closer and closer around him.  
   
He’s so tired, he thinks, and closes his eyes. He can’t remember the last time he felt this tired.  
   
  
   
  
   
  
   
“Ryuga, have you been… training in the middle of the night or something?”  
   
He blinks up at her, startled. The park table where they’ve stopped to examine their map, the scenery and sounds around them, it all seems to suddenly snap back into existence. What had he just been thinking about? He can’t recall.  
   
Rian frowns. “The cut,” she says, exasperated, pointing to her own cheek to mirror his own. He lifts his hand with a quiet “oh” to touch the raised red scratch that lingers there. Can feel the pleasant sting of the others beneath his clothes.  
   
“Training, yeah,” he says, without much conviction in his voice.  
   
“With who? Daigo?”  
   
Ryuga shifts in place and feels something bump against his thigh. Something light and metallic.  _With who, Ryuga?_  Rian is asking again, more insistent this time, but she might as well be speaking to him from a distance, as he covertly brushes aside his coat to find the red Houken dagger still hanging there from his belt, its blade glinting up at him.  
   
He remembers, now. How he’d hesitated, when he’d gone to return it to its rightful place in the shop.  
   
He wonders how much of it was really the magical influence of these things.  
   
He wonders how much of it was just him.  
   
“With Daigo, yeah,” Ryuga says, smiling in a way that he knows doesn’t reach his eyes as he tugs his coat forward to hide the dagger’s blade. “Let’s try east of here instead.”


End file.
